Looking Back To My Childhood Cartoons

    Ah the end of the year, a time when everyone looks back on the year past.  Phooey on that.  Why look back over the year when you can look all the way back to childhood?  So here are some links to a few of the cartoons I loved when I was a kid.


Super Chicken
     I had not watched an episode of Super Chicken for decades before making this post, and yet when it somehow came up in a conversation (tip: avoid starting conversations with me, god only knows where they'll end up) I discovered that I could still do his theme song.  And the line about "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it Fred" has been in my brain for as long as I can remember.  It's a terrible show, but I loved it.

M.A.S.K.
    These guys were so cool.  The transforming vehicles and helmets that did cool things, I loved these toys the moment I saw them at the store.  Sadly the cartoon isn't that great, I didn't think it was even back then, but the toys were great enough to earn this a place in my nostalgia collection.

Battle of the Planets
    I had always thought that Robotech was the first anime I ever saw (Americanized though it was), but actually that spot belongs to Battle of the Planets, which was another Americanized anime.  I cannot remember much of the story now (and only watched a few minutes before making this post), but I have a feeling that part of why I liked this as a kid was that it was not a silly and stupid as most kids shows.

Defenders of the Earth
    Superfriends was okay, but the best superhero cartoon was Defenders of the Earth for me.  This is where I got my love for the character of The Phantom, even though he isn't comic-accurate in this cartoon (he did get his own awesome cartoon years later with Phantom 2040).

Felix the Cat
    One of my most favorite characters ever, with that awesome bag of tricks.

So there it is, totally un-asked-for and no doubt un-wanted, a look into some of the things from my childhood that made me the way I am.

YouTube Tutorials: Nazmus Nasir

    I'm coding the next section of the Character Tutorial right now, which you'll see next week.  Until then let me introduce you to Nazmus Nasir's YouTube channel.  I really like this guy, his videos are almost all around 10 minutes, and nicely focused on a single topic or a tight group of things.  Great for learning in easy to digest chunks or to look up a reference on something you forgot.  I highly recommend checking him out if you haven't already.

He's got tutorials on JavaScript (like, over 50)...

And Excel...

And C++...

Plus some other gameplay and tech videos.

The Elemental Empire - part 6 - Technology and Fantasy

    I talked before about the role of magic in the setting I'm building, and how it differed from technology.  Let me revisit and expand on that by looking at the flip-side, what is technology?

    Of course, I've got an answer for this too - if magic is the invisible emotions of a single individual made real, technology is the invisible foundations of the real lives of the individuals.  Let me illustrate, while watching too much Crash Course World History it struck me about the "agricultural revolution" when people went from hunter/ gatherers to farmers (hi Wikipedia).  A couple of thousand years later and we get the Industrial Revolution (why, hello again Wikipedia).  And I love this last Wikipedia page because it has the quote that sums up all of technology for me: "The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way."  Oh ho, there it is, technology is that thing that influences daily life.
    We humans are tool users.  We didn't get a lot of innate abilities.  We don't have wings or claws, fur or feathers, we don't have a lot of physical advantages when compared to all the other animals out there.  We do have really big brains though, and we like to mess around with our environment.  We use stuff.  The old Star Frontiers game had a great quote about "Mr. Human and his indestructible junk show." (wow, I totally remembered it accurately too, page 7 of the Alpha Dawn Expanded book)  That's us all right, we use stuff - but given that our lives are not based on our natural abilities but rather on using tools, then it seems to be that when we change our tools we change our lives.
    Now, back in the day ovens were big and pretty hard to make.  So (if I'm remembering my limited history knowledge right) some villages would have one big oven that everybody would use.  A communal resource.  But now ovens are much, much smaller, and everybody has their own.  So cooking stopped being a communal resource and became a private resource.  But, we still have communal ovens, we just call them restaurants.  But, at the restaurant somebody else does the cooking for you, you don't have to know how to do it yourself, and so we get the people who rely on restaurants and have no idea about how to boil water.  Technology changes society, and that changes people's lives.  I have no idea about how to raise a cow or butcher it (I do at least know how to cook it), something that a less technologically developed person would have to know to survive.
    This is also one of my pet peevs about Star Trek.  In the Star Trek universe there are replicators that can create anything at will, holodecks that can simulate any reality, and characters make comments like "we don't use money anymore."  Okay, it's the far future, so sure, I'll buy that.  But wait a minute, with such reality altering technology at one's fingertips let me ask you a question: how many characters on Star Trek have tattoos?  Yeah, not many, like 2 maybe 3.  How many people on Star Trek have hair that is not a natural color?  Again not many, if any actually.  Why do I point out such mundane things after talking about super science?  Well, do you honestly think in a future where anything can be created or imagined that everybody would look like a white middle-age middle-class convention?  There is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where one of the characters creates a holodeck fantasy involving the other crew-members.  I don't remember the details now, but what I do remember is thinking: this would totally be everybody's problem.  If you could create your own physical, interactive reality at will - who the hell would stay in the real world?  Jeez, even today we have the stereotypical kid in Mom's basement playing video games; how many thousands of times worse would it be in a fully-immersive VR world like the holodeck?  That's what I hate about Star Trek, why I've lost my childhood love for it over the years: it presents all these super-technological advances and then acts like humanity and society would look like they do in our modern world.  Hell no.  Granted, the Enterprise is a military ship (spare me the science crap, they all wear uniforms), but the ship does have some civilians and they should be very flamboyant or exotic or incomprehensible by today's standards. (as a side note, I don't have the same problem with Star Wars because it is a fantasy with updated graphics, but I do hate Star Wars for the fact that it sucks at presenting magic as bad as Star Trek sucks at presenting technology)

    As humans, without natural abilities we build our lives around tools, and when tools change (ie, technology develops) our lives and society changes as well.
    Which then raises some big questions about how to handle technology in a fantasy RPG setting, and how that interacts with magic - because people with magic do have natural advantages and so would they even look at technology the same way?  Hmmm.... that's a good question given my Humins all are innately magical and the other races all have some kinds of abilities (since I'm basing them off the standard fantasy races, and they always do something more than humans naturally).  Magic seems like it would be the main force for society, which actually works since it explains why the setting has such low technology, why this is a medieval-based world, it never needed to rely on tools as much, it has relied on it's magic users instead and thus stayed smaller and less developed.
    The big question though, the one that I hate to even contemplate but have to because somebody out there will want it, is guns.
    Damn you Pathfinder for Ultimate Combat and guns.  Not that it started with you, shoot there was the ancient original D&D module that had lasers if I remember right, but Pathfinder was the first mainstream fantasy setting to include guns.  The problem with guns is that they changed everything.  They totally revolutionized combat, making the armor and swords and bows that most RPGs are build on obsolete pretty quickly.  So you just introduced the thing that is going to kill off most of your equipment tables.  Why the hell would you throw a shuriken when you could shoot someone?  But bigger than that, I hate the game for throwing in guns as if they were no big deal.  Again, society and technology are linked, you can't change one without a change in the other.  Guns do not grow on trees, they had to be developed, experimented, crafted.  You need to harvest all the components for gunpowder, you need to shape the metal for the guns themselves.  They are pretty big undertakings, not something that just anybody would be walking around with (and yes, granted you can say the same for plate armor and the like, RPGs are not good about modeling the scarcity of things (since we have to let every player do all the cool stuff)).  And they are a major cultural shift.  Running at the wizard with a sword is crazy-talk; but shooting him dead while he's babbling, oh hell yes!  With a gun anybody can be a wizard, with a gun anybody can do super-human things.  Do you think wizards would like that?  Do you think kings would?
    The gods heal right, not wizards (they can't do that healing thing they just kill everybody) (so are the gods blocking healing magic from wizards? that's the only thing that makes sense), but the gods can heal.  So how are the gods going to react to modern surgical methods that heal people and save lives, CPR that brings back the dead, and when people no longer need to turn to them for healing?  Will they be happy?  Mad?  Destroy the world?

    Okay, so I've rambled for a while.  And honestly, I don't have a lot of hard thoughts right now.  I'm going over the factors in my brain, thinking about how magic and technology are going to react to each other.  And more, the opportunities both offer for storytelling.  I just finished reading David Weber's amazing Safehold series a few months back.  It's an awesome story about far future technological humans who meet an alien species that wipes out all other species once they reach a certain level of development.  The humans fight and lose, so they hide away enough colonists to populate one world, Safehold, and create a religion that prohibits technological development - that way, this last remnant of humanity will not also be wiped out down the road.  But some of the settlers disagreed with that plan, they wanted to lay low and start over, but they also believed it would be possible to defeat the aliens if humans re-developed technology while knowing what they would someday face.  So the books start with a church-controlled world of limited technology, and over the series we see technological developments introduced and how society is radically changed as a result.  And some people take to that change, some hate it, but there is a lot of drama and compelling stories since the fate of the world is at stake.  Not in a stupid superhero "big beam in the sky" way, but a really interesting "what world are these changes going to make for the future" way.  I don't really want to set up this setting to tell the story of how technology changes the world - but at the same time I would be happy to leave some bits in that a GM and players who wanted to tell that story could use.

    I'm going to end this rant here, since it segues well into what I want to explore next: what is a setting good for?  What kind of a tool is it?  Or, even better to say - what kind of a tool am I trying to build for GMs?  I'll go over that next.
    The details are slowly being expanded too, I'm actually getting close to writing some real story and not just all this theoretical stuff.  That writing and revising is a part of what's been slowing down my posting, sorry about that.  I am working on some material though and it will be out as soon as it's ready.  Until next week!

Sample Characters: Starfinder

    I did a post earlier about making a character for the My Little Pony RPG, Tails Of Equestria.  At the time it was because I had nothing else to write :) but I decided to make it a thing.  So from time to time I'm going to create a character for an RPG and post it - and today we're going with Starfinder. Now, I know nothing about Starfinder except that it's "Pathfinder in space."  So I am not going to make an optimized character, heck I might not even make a playable character.  But it might be interesting for any of you who haven't played the game before.  So let's jump in.

    I'm only using the core Starfinder rulebook for this build, and it has a list of character creation steps on pages 14-15.  And then the following sections totally disregard that order.  So I'm going to write this in the steps that I went through.  In this case, both the book and I agreed to start with "a character concept."  I have no idea if I'll ever play this character, or with whom, or in what kind of a campaign.  So I want to make the most broadly applicable character possible.  And that means fighter.  Any RPG can use somebody who can kill monsters.  But I don't really like the "tank" fighter, I like the smart Batman (which sadly no filmmaker on Earth seems to also like), so I want to do a smart fighter.  With guns/ tech I think I'm looking at a Dex-based, quick kind of fighter.


    The next step (in my process) was to look at the "Themes."  These are little ways to flavor your character, kind of like the Backgrounds in D&D 5th Ed.  There are 10 of them, each one comes with 4 leveled abilities:

• Ace Pilot - you're good at driving and flying and all that stuff
• Bounty Hunter - you hunt people
• Icon - you're a pop star, or have some kind of audience 
• Mercenary - you're used to carrying stuff and working in a group
• Outlaw - you have contacts in the criminal underworld
• Priest - you're connected to a deity and church/ religion
• Scholar - you're smart and good at reading
• Spacefarer - you're a jack of all trades
• Xenoseeker - you know about alien life forms
• "Themeless" - you can choose to not have a theme, in which case you still get a small benefit (not quite as much as having a theme though)

    For a "fighter" the obvious choices would be Bounty Hunter or Mercenary.  But I don't really want to go that route, I feel like making something a little more unusual.  My first thought was the Icon, that maybe I was some kind of popular fighter, like a YouTuber of the future (maybe Xander Cage from XXX would be a better role-model though :) - but then I really liked the idea of Priest.  There is a list of 20 deities in the back of the book (starting on page 482).  The descriptions are very, very brief, and don't describe the kinds of churches or religious organization in very much depth, but one did strike me.  "Desna" is the goddess of dreams, luck, stars and travelers.  She jumped out at me because it says that she communicates with her followers through dreams, and they rely on instinct.  That seems like it would be a great tool for my GM.  If my character follows the dreams and hunches of his Goddess, then the GM can use me as a way to guide the party, a two-legged plot device.  I now from my GMing that sometimes it's great to have a way to tug on the party "in character" to help guide them when they get stuck or off course.  So with this character I can be the mouthpiece of the GM if necessary.  And it isn't the stereotypical military fighter.  So I'll go with that.


    With a Theme, let's skip over to the class.  Your class is the biggest thing about your character, since it'll have an impact on your character through the entire game.  The "fighter" of the Starfinder setting is the Soldier.  But there are 7 classes in the book:

• Envoy - the space Bard
• Mechanic - the summoner or cyborg
• Mystic - the spacde Magic User
• Operative - the space Rogue
• Solarian - the space Soulknife (guy who summons weapon or armor for non-psychic fans)
• Soldier - the space Fighter
• Technomancer - the Magic User who uses technology

    As I mentioned I knew I was going to be a Soldier.  The Solarian would also fit with the "fighter" concept, and might even go a bit better in a way with the Priest Theme, but I didn't feel like making that character.  So a Soldier I will be.  At level 1 a Soldier has one class ability, they have to choose a "Primary Fighting Style."  They'll get 5 abilities from this style, starting at 1st level and every 4 after.  There are 7 styles in the book.  And I have to admit, they all looked pretty good on average.  The "Blitz" rushes into melee, which didn't sound like fun for me.  The "Bombard" throws grenades/ explosives.  The "Guard" is defensive, which would have worked with my concept but I didn't feel it.  The "Hit-and-Run" is a mobile fighter, while the "Sharpshoot" (yeah, no "-er" at the end of it) stays at a range.  Neither appealed to me.
    The two that I really liked were the "Arcane Assailant" who is basically the Magus from Pathfinder, and the "Armor Storm" who eventually wears Power Armor.  I love the idea of the Power Armor, the suit of armor with it's own weapons and abilities, basically Iron Man.  But I also really like the Wizard/ Fighter hybrid of the Magus, though the Arcane Assailant doesn't cast spells, just enhances weapons.  This was a really, really hard choice.  I actually wanted both, and I think I am going to make both down the line, but for right now I'm going to force myself to commit to the Armor Storm.  One of the things I like about Power Armor is that you use it's Strength in place of your own.  So I can focus on Dex, and eventually I'll let the armor handle the Str.


    Okay, with a Theme and Class, let's get the last major leg of the character and decide on a Race.  There are 7:

• Android - sentient robots, tough and smart but not very sociable
• Human - versatile, gain a bonus feat and choose an ability (exactly the same as Pathfinder)
• Kasatha - 4-armed warrior poets
• Lashunta - psychics, choose either the  smart or tough sub-types
• Shirren - hive mind insects
• Vesk - space Orcs
• Yoski - space Hobbit-rats

    The description of the Androids talks about how they used to be slaves of the Humans and have some baggage over that.  I'm not really interested in that troupe, but I do like the idea that this character has chosen to be a servant of the Goddess instead of any mortal power.  I kind of have this idea that he's sort of broken though, or maybe considered defective by other androids.  Not sure if I really want to explore that, but it was an idea.  Also, Androids also get bonuses to Dex and Int, which are the two attributes I am aiming for, and the penalty to Cha is not a big deal since the typical fighter is not expected to be the talker.


    Okay, with the big three - I am an Android Priest Soldier - I've got the major part of my character.  Time to start filling in the details and actually playing with some numbers.  Let's get our Attributes fixed.  I've got +2 Dex +2 Int +1 Wis -2 Cha.  I like Starfinder for making Point Buy the default and rolling an optional rule.  I actually don't like rolling for attribute scores, I think point-buy is a better system to keep everything level.  So here are starting scores:

• Strength             10
• Dexterity            12
• Constituation     10
• Intelligence        12
• Wisdom             11
• Charisma            8

    To these scores I can add 10 points, with no score going over 18.  You can't lower a score, only raise them.  After some beard-scratching I settle on these...

• Strength            10 (+0)
• Dexterity          16 (+3)
• Constituation    12 (+1)
• Intelligence       14 (+2)
• Wisdom            13 (+1)
• Charisma           8 (-1)

    Forcing the odd score is annoying to me.  I think the whole odd-scores-for-feat-prequisites is stupid.  I doubt anybody would notice anything if we dropped the scores and only used modifiers.  But it is what it is.  So those will be my attribute scores.  Are they the best scores?  Are they a good base for developing in the future?  I have no idea, but they look good to me.


    On to Skills.  As a Soldier I get 4 skill points, and with the Int mod that's 6 total.  So basically I can pick 6 skills and have them always equal to my level.  While I could put points in skills one level, and then different skills another level, I think that would be stupid.  Might as well pick some skills and stick to them.  I have 8 class skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Engineering, Intimidate, Medicine, Piloting, Profession, and Survival.  From the Priest Theme I add Mysticism as a class skill.  All of those skills will get a +3 bonus if I put at least one skill point in them, but I can choose any skills I want.  There are 20 skills total - I'm so not going to list them all here.  Here are the skills I went with, and my modifiers...

• Acrobatics        1 sp + 3 class + 3 Dex = +7
• Athletics        1 sp + 3 class + 0 Str = +4
• Engineering        1 sp + 3 class + 2 Int = +6
• Medicine        1 sp + 3 class + 2 Int = +6
• Mysticism        1 sp + 3 class + 1 Wis = +5
• Perception        1 sp + not class + 1 Wis = +2

    To be honest, I have no idea what skills to take.  None of them really jump out as something my character should be able to do.  I went with Acrobatics and Athletics to give me the ability to move around, and since the character is Dex based, so he seems like to should be mobile (through, granted, Athletics is Str based).  Engineering sounds good for a robot, and Medicine is something that he can use to help others.  Mysticism just goes with his spiritual side, and the last was a toss-up.  Stealth sounded like it could be useful, but I wasn't sure how well it fit with the character concept.  He doesn't seem like a sneaky guy.  Neither Diplomacy or Culture sounded right, though I'm still not sure about Culture, it might work to represent the places he's been and different kinds of people he's helped.  In the end I settled on Perception because it's never a bad skill really.  I'm not sure it should be a skill in the first place, and since it isn't class it's not very high, but nothing else seemed like a better choice.


    Now for the Feats.  Well, feat singular.  This is the part of Pathfinder I hate.  Feats can let you do cool stuff, but they have such incomprehensibly long feat chains and prerequisites, in some cases, and are totally useless in other cases.  And there are too damn many of them.  Thankfully I've only got one book, but even still there are a lot of feats to look over and choose from - 98 if my count is right (not listing that many).  After giving them all a quick look there were a few that looked good.  "Bodyguard" would let him boost an ally's AC, though he isn't a real tanky-tank fighter.  "Blind-fight" kind of works with the "follows instinct" background of his god's followers, and it isn't useless though you likely won't see enemies in cover all the time.  "Mobility" might work, though I don't see him dancing through enemies, I think more and more he's likely going to be a ranged attacker.  "Suppressive Fire" would let him pin down enemies with a ranged attack, which might be very helpful.  And "Weapon Focus" applies to a whole group of weapons now, instead of the single weapon of Pathfinder.  But what's better, there is another feat called "Versatile Focus" that lets you extend Weapon Focus to all weapons you're proficient in, and as a Soldier that's all the weapons.  A Soldier does get a bonus feat at 2nd level, so I would take Weapon at 1st and Versatile at 2nd and then get a bonus to hit with all weapons.  I think I'm going to go that route, even though I'm not sure if the bonus to hit is really that great, having a better chance to hit seems like a good thing for a soldier to have.  Okay, feat chosen and even my next level's feat to boot.


    The last big step is Equipment.  Fantasy Pathfinder has quite a bit of equipment, sci-fi Starfinder has pages and pages of really small lists of equipment.  Oh boy is this going to be a pain.  Well, I've got 1,000 credits so lets see how far they go.
    After a lot of small print, here's what I've got...
250cr        Pulsecaster Pistol (does non-lethal damage)
350cr        Laser Pistol, Azimuth
250cr        Second Skin (light armor)
120cr        2 spare Batteries (for either weapon)
7cr        Personal Comm
1cr        Flashlight
20cr        Engineering Tool Kit
which leaves him with 2 credits in his pocket.  Wow, that doesn't seem like a lot of gear, but so it goes.  The leveled gear like D&D 4th Ed. is kind of a pain in the backside since it makes the lists so damn long.


    And the final choice to make is Alignment, which I'm going to make Chaotic Good like his deity.  The rest is just copying down the numbers, which I will do and post the character sheet on my Google Drive here.  I used a great fillable PDF character sheet I found here.

   Well, this has been an interesting experience.  I do like the game from first impressions, there seem to be some neat potential characters from the races, themes and classes.  Picking feats is not as horrible as Pathfinder, but isn't really fun - and the equipment lists are a bear to navigate - both could use being listed by level, there are a lot of feats and gear that a beginning character cannot choose or afford.  It is a little daunting to wade through the options, and the skill list does not seem really evocative.  Making a character without any real knowledge of the system is kind of a pain, but I've done a lot worse.  No doubt with some experience it will be easy enough.  The character did seem to grow pretty well from concept to final details, so I liked how everything fit overall.  I'd give it a thumbs-up if I was bothering to rate it, but one character is not much to formulate an opinion.
    So there you go, there's a Starfinder character that you can use, and a little insight into how the system works.  Hope you enjoyed our little project, and if you were a Patron of mine (see the link at the right) you could choose what game you wanted me to make a character for next (shameless plug, hey, I like to eat).  Until next time then!

Bonus Legal Stuff - I used the logo from the Paizo Community Package, so here's the required legaleeze: "This website uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo's Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This [website, character sheet, or whatever it is] is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo's Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com."

Patreon Previews

    So I finally got some Patreon-only posts up at my Patreon page.  My apologies to my one Patron :)  I am going to keep posting there, even if I fall behind I'll post only to Patreon and catch up a week later here on the blog.  I like to eat, so the support is greatly appreciated and this is a thank you to my supporter and an FYI for why things won't be updated here this week.  Next week I'll have everything here on the blog and will try very hard to stay on track (I don't really do anything for Christmas, hopefully I can get a lot of writing done, that would actually be a wonderful present).

My brain is moving, just not very quickly

    Anyone who's been following me has no doubt noticed that I haven't been posting on the regular schedule I wanted to keep.  Things got strange a month or two ago (time is a blur currently) and I ahven't managed to get back into a routine that works.  But I am working on projects, and will have some updates coming up in the fairly near future...

5th Edition SRD - I'm transitioning from looking at characters to looking at running the game, which is going to close out this project when done.  This is a hard part though, I have only GMed a few adventures, and they came from the canned Starter Set (which is pretty good btw), so I need to do a lot of reading and thinking on how to approach this half of the game.  I am planning on going over non-combat encounters, the combat system, monster design and loot/ leveling.  That should take a minimum of 4 more posts (I'm betting on 6-8) and then I'm going to finish that project.

Night-Reign, aka The Elemental Empire - I have some over-arching story for this setting, and I am going to talk about the technology for the setting, and I did a post on terrain then of course decided to change all of that work.  I also am going to talk about how I want to write and present the setting, what kind of a tool it is meant to be for GMs.

The Open2 Engine - somehow Bookworm managed to merge with the tutorial character viewer project I was working on and things got all confused in my head.  I'm going to post a roadmap to what I want Bookworm to be, feature-wise, and get back on coding that.  It is the hardest project I have going as it requires me to learn all new things - I've been gaming as far back as I can remember, coding since last June.

    And I do have a few odds and ends to post/ share.  I am not sure when I'll get back on the daily schedule I want, things are still very strange for me, but I wanted to let anyone who cared know that I am still working and have not fallen off the Internet.  Hope you all are having a less hectic holiday season than I am :)

YouTube Map-making Tutorials

    For this Tutorial Thursday here are a few YouTube videos that I watched to help me learn how to create maps.

This is the first of a great 6 part series...

This next video uses a similar system, but it's only one video...

And this video is just about how to do a cool effect...

The Elemental Empire - part 5 - Terrain Digressions

    Okay, I meant to do a post on the technology I wanted in my new setting, but I'm not going to hit that today.  I've had some ideas about the setting in general that may have me change some things in a pretty big way (while it may not seem like I have a lot of detail for this setting there is actually a lot in my head that I haven't posted yet).  So while I'm re-evaluating things I'm just going to throw out a quick post on some work I've been doing.
    I've been slowly adding terrain and detail to my world map so let me share some of that while I'm working on bigger things.  This is the continent with the Elemental Empire as it currently stands...

    I want a lot of different terrain types in the Empire.  To the south is a mostly desert, though I'm thinking it'll be a region that is pure desert at the top and that is very fertile at the south, someplace that floods like Egypt/ The Nile.
    There are two major mountain ranges to the West and East which divide the Empire.  They are a little too wide proportionally right now, I am still working on this.  They make up the forested lands.  The central Empire is the capitol, inside the ring of magically-created forest (the capitol itself isn't on the map yet) and a lake.  The surrounding farmland keeps the capitol fed, and there are only a few passes through the high mountains to the western and eastern halves of the Empire.  The artic north is sparsely inhabited.  On the south-eastern tip of the continent is a swampy area that may or may not be a part of the Empire (thinking it's uninhabited, with the forested northern parts being more inviting to live in).  Now that I've started laying out the terrain I might have to go and re-draw the shape of the continent.  The big landmass to the north of the capitol seems strange to me, and I'm thinking of adding a lot of islands to the western side.

I'm using the Sketchy Cartography Brushes by StarRaven on Deviantart (link here) which are awesome, a big thinks to him (her? never can tell online) for the great art.

I also found a couple of cool links on making terrain/ climate.  There is this post on Mythcreants about coloring the map (which I mostly ignored :) and this other post on creating plausible maps.  The Tao of D&D had a link to this cool Wikipedia post about the Koppen climate classification system too.

    Okay, admittedly this is not a very big post, but I will have much more detailed stuff to come, promise :)

5th Edition Rolls With 2d10 Instead

    I did a post a while ago looking at the DCs and odds of success for the 5e SRD.  I made the mistake of telling a friend about it.  He said, "well, you like the idea of rolling 2d10 instead of 1d20, so how would that change the odds?"  I hate him.  Don't get me wrong, he's my best friend and the coolest guy I know and nicer and more patient than any human has a right to be.  Still, I hate him.  He tends to say things like this that send me into some new project black hole that I may spend the rest of my life on.  In this case it isn't so bad - but making the table for all the odds in 5e was a lot of work, more work that it looks like, and making this damn table was a lot of work too.  Still, he was right, so let's look at what happens if you roll 2d10 instead of 1d20 with 5th Edition :)

    First off, why roll 2d10 instead of 1d20?  Well, multiple dice create a bell curve.  A single die is flat, it has the exact same odds of rolling any number, like so (again all this will be thanks to AnyDice.com)...

But add in a die and you create a bell curve, now the middle results are more common than the extremes...

The reason I like this idea (though granted I have not found a table to try it) is from my experiences with Pathfinder combat.  I'll give you the biggest example that comes to mind.  Some time ago I was working on an adventure and decided that I wanted to throw in a special encounter.  The evil Drow, dark elves, had been messing around in the background of the world and I wanted to have the party encounter them for the first time.  So I set up an adventure that would culminate in the party facing a group of Drow.  They would talk at first, the leader challenging the party's main fighter to a duel.  Everybody else would just watch the two champions face off.  But they wouldn't, after the 3rd round the Drow minions would ambush the party - showing how they were evil sneaky bast**ds.  Also I was going to use a new system where the Drow mages couldn't cast spells but could spend their slots for instant counterspells and to re-target the party's spellcaster - though that's tangential to my point, sorry.  Anyways, I crafted this Drow champion by hand to make sure she would be a good threat to the party's main fighter so we'd have a cool fight scene.  I didn't really narrate it as well as I should have, but the thing that killed the idea of this dramatic, tense, fight-to-the-death encounter with the PCs and NPCs watching was when NEITHER OF US COULD HIT A DAMN THING !!!!  Instead of having a riveting fight the other characters were bored and/or chagrined at how their champion couldn't hit the broad side of the proverbial barn.
    If you've played for any length of time you know what I'm talking about, that combat where it feels like 20 turns go by and nobody can hit anything.  Swing and miss, not the one-sided "oh crap we can't hit the bad guys" or "we rock we can't miss."  No, this is the frustrating, painful, boring "neither side can hit the either even though we're standing still two feet from each other swinging massive two-handed weapons."  Dice are random, that's why we use them after all (well, not random per se but unpredictable, sorry, tangent again) - but the thing is that flat dice like a single d20 are even worse.  The odds of rolling a hundred 1s are the same as rolling a hundred 10s or a hundred 20s.  With multiple dice and that bell curve the odds of rolling a hundred 2s or 20s is way, way lower than rolling a hundred 11s.  They are not quite as swingy.  In theory at least, again I've never played a game long-term that used multiple dice, so this is theory - and it's pretty subjective since the unusual edge cases, like my wiffle-ball fight, are the ones that stay in memory the clearest instead of the typical fight where most attacks hit.  So all this is based on feelings more than any real need or reason.

    That said, let's see what happens when we switch dice.  I'm going to keep Advantage and Disadvantage as rolling 3 dice and keeping 2.  I'm also going to do this from a +0 to +16 modifier against the 6 DCs in the 5e SRD, just like the last table, so here goes...

Okay, let's grab a few results and compare.  First let's look at a +0 modifier, a beginning character with no attribute modifier and no proficiency.

Very Easy    64  80  96 on 1d20        85  94  99 on 2d10
Easy             30  55  80                      38  64  85
Medium       9  30  51                        7  21  43
Hard             1  5  10                          1  1  3

Okay, so the easy is a little easier and the hard a little harder.  Now let's look at a +2 modifier, so having an attribute bonus or proficiency but not both.

Very Easy    81  90  99 on 1d20        98  99  99 on 2d10
Easy            42  65  88                      58  79  93
Medium      16  40  64                      15  36  62
Hard            2  15  28                         1  6  15

Okay, so looking at Easy - with a +0 it's 55 and 65 with +2 on 1d20.  It's 64 or 79 with 2d10.  So 2d10 is not a big boost, but does favor the players over 1d20.  The funny thing is Hard where 1d20's 5 / 15 is better than 2d10s 1 / 6.  So this would make reaching for those really hard DCs even harder, and Advantage doesn't give that much of a benefit.  That kind of sucks.

    Overall, I don't think I really like this.  Well, let me amend that.  I still like the idea of rolling 2d10 for attack rolls, I think that would help take out some of the crazy swingy results.  But for skills I would switch to the regular 1d20.  Okay, so that was an interesting waste of time :)  Here's the regular 5e Odds table below, and you can find another crazy way to use dice in my post on constraining results to simulate skill.

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 11 - Skill Descriptions

    Having looked at how to roll, let's look at when to roll - so what skills does the 5e SRD have?  Although, as the Angry GM pointed out there are not really skill checks, they are attribute checks that can be increased by skill.  There is no "unskilled" concept, that is there are not any activities that the rules say you cannot do without proficiency.  So you can do open heart surgery without being proficient in "Medicine".  Another weird thing is that some actions one might think of as being "skill" are instead "tool proficiency" in the rules.  Like crafting - being a blacksmith means being proficient in balcksmith tools.  This is weird, but it does make a kind of sense.  You can't forge metal without, well, a forge, right?  And while everybody has a voice to sing with, you need a harp if you want to play the harp.  So if you don't have the tools (or at least improvised tools) then you can't do the action.  So it isn't as weird on reflection as I first thought (still feels weird though).
    By not having an "unskilled" concept the 5e SRD tries to work for a more "old school" game feel, where any character can do anything the player can make a case to the GM for.  Which is good for players who like that style of play that is more open to negotiation between the players and GM then more "rules heavy" players who use the details in the rules to handle player/GM interactions.  This is a matter of taste, whatever style you prefer is your preference, there is no absolute right or wrong (though it sucks when you and your GM or other players have different preferences).  The rules as written (or RAW in gamer slang) do lean towards that old school play-style though since they do not give very detailed guidelines for what each skill can be used for.
    In fact, let me list what the rules have to say about each skill.  I am going to re-organize the skill list though, the SRD puts each skill with a specific attribute which is stupid.  The easy example is Intimidation, which is under Charisma, but that makes no sense for a high Strength low Charisma Fighter.  Their bulging muscles, heavy armor and weapons and skill at killing do not make them scary at all (insert irony here).  That's an obvious place to add Strength instead of Charisma.  On the other hand, threatening someone with your powerful friends or that you'll cast a curse on them would totally be Charisma.  Likewise a sprint might be Strength, an obstacle course or hurdles Dexterity, and a marathon Constitution - even though all are the same skill of running/ athletics.  So for the list below I'm going to put the skill under the action categories I've been using (though not for a while now).  Also, I'm going to bullet point what each skill is good for, because frankly the SRD wastes a lot of words when describing the skills.  So let's look at the skill and what the SRD says to use them for...

Exploring

Athlethics

• climbing
• jumping
• swimming

Acrobatics

• keep your balance
• dive, tumble, roll or flip

Stealth

• hide from soneone
• move without being noticed
• (hiding does have a detailed breakdown in a sidebar)

Animal Handling

• calm an animal
• maneuver a mount
• intuit animal's intentions

Perception

• spot, hear or otherwise notice something in the environment

Survival

• hunt
• guide/ navigate
• predict weather
• avoid hazards

Investigating

Arcana

• identify spells
• identify magic items
• knowledge about the planes

History

• past events, people and civilizations

Investigation

• look around for clues and make deductions from clues

Nature

• terrain
• plants and animals
• weather

Religion

• dieties
• religious hierarchies
• secret cults

Manipulating

Sleight of Hand

• planting or lifting an object on/from another person
• concealing an item on your person

Medicine

• stabilize a dying companion
• diagnose an illness
• (I find it a little odd that healing is not mentioned at all)

Talking

Insight

• determine the true intentions of a creature

Deception

• hide the truth from another

Intimidation

• influence another's actions through threats/violence

Performance

• "delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling or some other form of entertainment"

Persuasion

• influence with "tact, social graces, or good nature"

Fighting
There are no skills for fighting, exactly, rather you have the weapon proficiencies and such that are scattered throughout the rules


    Okay, I'm not listing the full descriptions here, but if you read them please tell me if you think they suck.  I really don't like the way the SRD describes the skills at all.  There are no examples of actions that might be more difficult - that whole Easy, Medium and Hard DC chart that opened this section of the rules - which is the kind of thing that a more "rules heavy" table could use, and the descriptions get overly specific for what a "rules light" table needs.  I think in trying to accommodate both play styles they ended up being useful to neither.  And the tools/ tool proficiency do not really have any descriptions.  If you have a Herbalism Kit it is used when you "identify or apply herbs."  Wow, how helpful.  So if I want to heal someone by using herbs, how many HP can I heal?  Doesn't say.  If I want to remove a condition like exhausted by giving someone an all-natural Red Bull, can I and what's the DC?  Again, there is nothing there for "rules heavy" play, and even "rules light" GMs don't have a lot of guidance (for example, should herbs be allowed to remove conditions at all? should herbal and magical healing stack? that's a more rules light guidance on "should you let your players do this or will it screw up the game" the designers could point out).
    Also, a pet peeve, tool proficiencies are basically skills and weapons/ armor proficiency are basically skills, but they are not listed with the skills - instead the same basic concept is scattered in different locations.  I like more structure in the rules layout, listing and describing similar things in the same place.  Makes it easier to find a rule you forget at the table if you know everything skill-like is in the same chapter (and the fact that the pdf does not have a table of contents really, really, pisses me off).

    So, looking at skills overall - need a breakdown by DC levels, I think it would be good to have examples of how each attribute could be used with each skill (which might inspire "rules light" players in how to think in each skill in different ways too), put tools with skills (or just make them a kind of sub-set of skills) and fold in the weapons and armor since they are basically the same thing (or should be at least).  Some things I would change in the existing system.  As is, this is better than nothing, but more skilled and experienced players and GMs who like the "rules light" style will get the most from this I think.  18 skills is at least better than the 30+ of the 3.5 SRD, I do like the more focused skill list.  There is fairly good coverage.  Using skills at the table though, in particular for mysteries and NPC interactions seems like a problem since there is no guidance on the roll dice vs role-play minefield.  Off the cuff I think the skill system mostly sucks, but this was just a first look - next week I'm going to keep poking around the skills and how you'd use them at the table, along with some other checks.

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 10 - One Roll To Rule Them All

You can find links to the previous articles here.

    One of the things I like about the 5e SRD is how it's pretty simple mechanically.  There is one core mechanic for most rolls, which is easy to remember, and it has enough depth (I feel) that you can adjust it to the ever-changing circumstances (and player ingenuity).  There are 4 parts to a check:

⦁    The d20 Roll
⦁    Attribute Modifier
⦁    Proficiency Bonus
⦁    Other Modifiers


The d20 Roll
    All checks use a d20 roll, but there are 3 ways you could roll the dice.  A normal roll is just 1d20 and take the result.  If you have Advantage then you roll 2d20 and take the best.  If you have Disadvantage you roll 2d20 and take the worst.  Pretty simple to remember, but does it really matter?  Well, let's turn to our friend, AnyDice.com, and see...

    So Advantage basically doubles your odds of getting a 20 and drops the odds of a 1 to "very rarely."  Disadvantage works the same in reverse.  So it's a pretty hefty change in the odds.  In combat a 1 is an automatic miss and a 20 an automatic hit, so it can really matter then.  Some GMs I've known have done the same with skill checks, or given some bonus on a 20 and penalty on a 1, but that's a house rule.
    While some abilities give Advantage (can't think of any that impose Disadvantage off the top of my head) what I like about it is using it as a GM tool.  Offering Advantage can be a nice way to reward a player for clever thinking, or to tempt a player into doing something stupid.  It's important to convey to the players that this is a pretty significant bonus/ penalty (something I don't think the SRD does a good job of) though.  Even a poor character, with low stats or no proficiency bonus, has a moderate chance of success if they can gain Advantage - which is something the players need to know to encourage them to think of how to generate Adv when they have to roll something they are bad at.
    According to the rules any number of Adv and Dis cancel each other out.  So if 3 different things gave you Dis and 1 thing gave you Adv, then you would roll normally.  I'm not so fond of this.  Given how little there is to mechanically effect a roll, I'm okay with having the players try to stack up bonuses to overcome penalties.  That gets kinda meta-gamey, but it also works from a role-playing sense, and I think it can encourage the players to get creative and figure out how to turn a negative situation into a positive one, or can be fun when the GM turns a positive situation into a negative one :)


Attribute Modifiers
    Every roll adds one attribute modifier (subtracting if it's a negative modifier of course, adding a negative number is the same as subtraction after all) (honestly though, I've seen few negative mods overall).  The SRD usually lists an attribute, but you could use any if common sense says a different one would be more appropriate.
    The highest you could start with is a score of 20, for a +5 modifier (if I remember right).  The highest the attribute table goes up to is 30, for a +10 modifier.


Proficiency Bonus
    Depending on what you're doing, you might also add your proficiency bonus from a skill, tool or saving throw.  The SRD lists which skills go with which attributes, which is just stupid and should be ignored.  Use whatever skill and attribute combination that makes sense, the game is too unpredictable to hard-code these things.  The proficiency bonus is fixed to the character's level, though a few abilities will increase it (usually by 150%), it starts at +2 at 1st level and goes up to +6 at 17th level (which still baffles me that it doesn't hit the highest at 20th level, the pinnacle of your development).
    These compare fairly evenly to the ability modifiers.  Most players will have at least a +2 at their key attributes, and while the +5 is the highest possible starting modifier, it's fairly unlikely.  A +2 or +3 would be the most common, +4 for that focused character (or lucky roller).  So the odds of success between someone with good attributes and poor attributes is usually about a 10-15% difference.  It takes a change of both attributes and proficiency to swing the odds by 20-40%.  This is a big change from previous editions and some other games.  The fairly flat math of the 5e SRD means that every character has a decent chance at any activity, generally speaking.  It would be pretty rare to have no chance of success, especially when you add in the possibility for your GM to give you Advantage from a clever idea.  Players again need to know this, and possibly be encouraged to roll on something they might see as outside their specialty.


Other Modifiers
    The SRD does not explicitly say this (at least that I can remember), but it's not unreasonable to think that a GM might want to award a smaller modifier than Adv/Dis, something like a +/-2.  That's only about a 10% shift, enough to add up, but not a big deal.  Kind of a consolation prize, but it's still something.
    Along with this, I don't remember the SRD addressing it, but it's only logical to say that some things will be automatic success or failure.  That's an important thing for everybody to keep in mind.  The rules are meant to encourage creating a logical and consistent world, but they are not, and cannot be, perfect and cover every situation.  There will be times when the GM has to step in and say something just logically can't be done, or logically will work.  It's also very, very important that the GM make this clear to the players.  If the players come up with a really clever or amazing idea, let them win.  Don't drag out the dice, just narrate how their awesomeness saves the day and give them all a pat on the head.  That's not something you always want to do, but if you keep your eyes open you'll find those moments when the players need to be rewarded for working (and thinking) hard.  Likewise, whatever the rules might say there will be times when something just should not be possible to roll, and make sure you tell the players that before they commit to a course of action.


The Check
    Okay, having gone over the general outline of how to roll, let's break it down and start looking at the probabilities.  Again, with the help of AnyDice.com I've got the odds of success for each of the 6 difficulties in the SRD, with Adv and Dis, from a +0 to a +16...

    Okay, looking at the table what strikes me?  Overall I like it.  I think you get a good spread of results, Adv and Dis make a nice difference, I think it's a pretty good system overall.  I'm not sure about the Easy DC, granted it would only come into effect at the lowest levels but it kind of seems like if something was this easy you should just go ahead and say the character succeeds.  It's interesting that Adv/Dis has the biggest impact in the middle.  If you had a 5% chance of success Adv would make that 10% (which may be double in absolute terms, but still sucks), but if you had a 45% Adv would make it 70% (going from 'iffy' to 'reliable').
    From a beginning character standpoint, let's look at 3 lines: the +0 for someone with no proficiency and no attribute mod, +2 for only one of those, and +4 for both...

Modifier    Very Easy (5)        Easy(10)    Medium(15)        Hard(20)
+0               64 80 96                30 55 80      9 30 51              1 5 10
+2               81 90 99                42 65 88      16 40 64            2 15 28
+4               Win Win Win        56 75 94      25 50 75            6 25 44

So having both, with the +4 modifier (or the max starting attribute mod), is a pretty good edge on the others.  You auto-succeed at the Very Easy challenges, you've got a 75% on Easy and a 50% on Medium.  Get Adv on either of those and they get pretty reliable.  Your 25% on a Hard sucks, but might still be enough to risk.  Given that's a character with an above-average attribute and is proficient, those seem like the odds you'd expect.  The character with a +2, only proficiency or a 14-15 attribute, is not as good but still not bad.  With the 90% chance of a Very Easy I'd just let the player have it as a GM (unless there was a really, really bad potential consequence for failure).  The 65% chance of an Easy is not great, so getting Adv is pretty important.  The 40-65% on a Medium are not great at all, but worth risking if the stakes are fairly low.  At a +0 modifier it's even more critical to get Advantage, getting 80% for Easy makes it pretty reliable and even the 51% Medium is again worth trying if the stakes are fairly low.  For the +0 and the +2 you wouldn't want to think about a Hard challenge unless you can get Advantage and the stakes were low.


Overview
    Looking at the system, it does a good job and is simple to use.  Instead of chasing a million modifiers getting Advantage, or avoiding Disadvantage, becomes the focus of a challenge.  That does nicely reduce a challenge to the one or two most important elements.  And while the overall spread is pretty narrow, given that a +16 is the highest you could get at level 20 (or, 17 actually).  In the 3.5 SRD/ Pathfinder a +40 modifier is not impossible, or even that hard, at 20th level.  So I like the simpler but not simplistic system.  So to speak :)  Actually, after laying out all the numbers I like the resolution system even more than my first impression.  This is a good mechanic, IMHO, and one I can build on.  The only thing I think is missing at all is a discussion of risk.  Saying how hard something is an important step, but the even more important question is what's at stake?  If it's a matter of life and death, like a save or die effect, then a 25% chance is not something you want to take.  But if it's a wager of a few copper pieces, or a few hit points out of hundreds, then 25% is not a big deal.  No game that I know of really talks about risk though, it is a hard thing to codify given all the variables, but it's still a key part of considering a course of action.
    Another thing the SRD does not address is hidden vs explicit target numbers.  I'd say the general advise I've heard is to hide the numbers a player needs, but I'm actually not a big fan of that overall.  I think it's a good thing for players to know what they need, it lets them make intelligent decisions, and my compromise for unpredictability is that I'll usually hide the DC for the first attempt, and then say what they need.  So the first swing is blind, but after that roll (hit or miss) I'll just give out the enemy's AC.  On other attempts I'll give a ballpark, like "you think it'll be a 10 or 15" since the character should be able to assess the situation to some degree that I can't communicate as well to the player.  Same thing with hit points, I'll say "it looks like the enemy is down to half their HP" during a fight.  Or, "you think 1 or 2 more attacks will finish them."  I want the players to know the odds, so that if they see they have really bad odds they can stop and think about how to change the situation.  Which is what I love about the Adv/Dis mechanic.  Getting Adv can turn bad odds into decent ones, in a lot of cases, and I'll gladly give Adv to a player who can think creatively.  That gives me some narrative flexibility, and anybody can get Adv on anything with a good enough reason, so that gives the players something they can mostly measure and is always an option (not necessarily easy or cheap, but there).
    While the strange progression of the proficiency table looks weird to me, I have to admit that overall I think the system hangs together pretty well.  I also think it would greatly benefit every player to look at these tables and get a feel for the odds.  Knowing when the odds are in your favor and you should charge ahead, or when things are going against you and you need a new plan, can be critical to survival.

    Okay, we've taken a pretty good look at a lot of the 5e SRD so far.  I'm not sure what I want to look at next, but we'll continue our journey through the rules next week.
   

Posts Delayed

With the holiday and some personal things I'm not going to be posting this week, but I'll pick everything up again next week :)

The Elemental Empire - part 4 - What is Magic?

    One of the biggest things I have to consider for the Elemental Empire setting is, what is magic?  Magic is a big, wonderful, pain-in-the-***.  I love magic, I love playing wizards.  From a design standpoint however, I hate magic.  Magic is one of those things that is so hard to do well, it can easily become too over- or under-powered and destroy everything else you've created.  Just do a Google search on "wizards vs fighters" (ah, the liner fighter and quadratic wizard, I've read so many of those posts) and see the never-ending arguments about magic and how it works in the game.  Any game, while this is a favorite past-time of D&D players, any game with magic has the same potential problems.  So magic is something that needs to be carefully weighed and purposefully designed.  And it starts with a  simple question: what is magic?
    Well, there are so many ways to answer that question, but let me posit there is one fundamental core to any definition of magic: the ability to do super-human things.  Yeah, this covers a lot of things that are not considered "magic" per se, like super-powers and psionics and super-science.  Anything that is beyond the human normal is "magic" by this definition - but I think it's a vital starting point.  There is the famous Arthur C Clark quote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" which hits it on the head.  The thing that makes magic such a nightmare to design is that it allows the players to do things beyond the normal for humans - which means that the world we all know and expect and make decisions based on gets thrown out the window.  Highly advanced technology and comic book powers are magic for all intents and purposes, because they all take you out of the familiar and predictable world and take you somewhere else.  They break reality, and breaking reality is a tricky thing.  While choosing the Roman Empire for an inspiration is going to take players out of the world they know (if I do it right, of course) adding magic is an even bigger shift.  Changing how people act and think is a lot smaller than changing the definition of reality itself.
    Since I'm creating a setting with magic, I'm allowing reality to be broken, then how do I want it to break?  Having some good, strong, logical and consistent rules is going to be vital here.  Since this is a story first, it is a setting after all and all RPGs are Interactive Narratives at heart, then it might be good to ask: what story purpose does magic serve?  And that is a very interesting question.

    I've always thought that the D&D system of magic, typically called "Vancian magic" was a great and terrible fit for a role-playing game.  For the few who might not know, D&D magic is very similar (I've never heard that it was directly adapted, just similar) to magic in the "Dying Earth" stories by Jack Vance.  In this system, fundamentally, mages can only know a limited number of spells and they lose the spell when it is cast.  Think of spells as grenades: they are very powerful, they take skill to use properly, you can only carry so many, there are multiple types, and after you use one it's gone- but you can get more if you have the right supply.  Yeah, spells are grenades, I had never thought of that metaphor until just now but it actually works really well.  This feels like a great fit for D&D because of it's war-gaming roots.  Spells are artillery, fighters are infantry, it works.  But it feels like a bad choice to me for a role-playing game for one reason: in the RPG magic is common, but in the stories and the system itself, magic is rare.  Vance's stories are called the "Dying Earth" for a reason.  This is a far-far-far-future Earth of magic and super-technology, and both of those are being completely lost.  The spellbooks that hold magic have vanished, and once a wizard casts a spell it's gone, so magic has mostly disappeared from the world.  Nobody remembers how to use technology.  The world is decaying, and the "fire-and-forget" style of magic fits that theme perfectly.  If magic was a renewable resource then it wouldn't be dying, it would still be around and viable.  Which would kill the theme that Vance had set up.  So it's odd to fit that system into a world where magic is common, or like in the Eberron setting (which I like by the way) where it is literally everywhere in civilization.  The narratives don't quite seem to line up.  Want more proof of that, try playing the old computer games like the "Gold Box" SSI games Pool of Radiance or Neverwinter Nights and count just how many days really pass while you play.  Mages have to sleep to refresh their grenade supply, so there is a lot of sleeping in those games that faithfully reproduce the system.  Thank god there's no real time limit to defeat the evil dragon.  In the 4th Edition of D&D or the Neverwinter MMO they dropped the whole memorizing thing altogether to facilitate a more active style of play.  The mechanics of magic, the definition of how it operates, encourages a certain style of narrative.
    So I ask myself, what kind of narrative do I want?  Why is magic in the game, what kind of stories is it designed to tell?
   
    For me, magic is human emotion made real.
    While we often take it personally, Nature is impersonal.  There is no such thing as "Mother Earth."  Mothers have feelings, they care for their progeny because they feel love and nurturing.  While Nature does provide for us (would suck to not have food and air and stuff) it does not do this out of any feeling or desire, it just does it.  It would do it even if we didn't exist.  It, the world and the laws that drive it, doesn't care about us.  If you say it does, then you've just created magic - the literal existence of human emotion.  Emotions drive us, sometimes when we wish they wouldn't.  There is no such thing really as anger, because emotions are not things, they are movement.  You are angry at something, you feel fear towards or away from something.  Having an emotion pretty much by definition moves you, being hungry drives you towards food, being afraid of spiders drives you away from them, feeling angry provokes certain actions.  Emotions are dynamic, and they are targeted.  People often say they would "work any job" or "eat anything" but those statements are pretty much never true.  Would you work as a human crash test dummy?  Or a roller-coaser mechanic if you're afraid of heights?  Would you eat a human being?  Odds are not.  With that emotion comes the target, the thing we want to have or do to fully satisfy that emotion, though we might settle for something else if we can't get what we want.
    So why is magic in my game?  To tell the stories of when someone's emotions change the world.
    This happens anyways, right?  I mean the dictator's desire for power leads him to take over the country and create a repressive regime instead of a land of milk and honey.  Yeah, it does.  The only reason we change the world is because of some feeling to do so.  Because we want to do so.  But the nice thing about magic is how quickly we can show that impact, and how broadly we can create connections.  How many unexpected and unfamiliar ways we can change reality.  Because while taking people out of the world can be dangerous from a design standpoint, it can be great for creating feelings of wonder.

    Okay, with that really broad starting point let's start refining magic.  Another key question to ask is: what's the difference between magic and technology?
    As I mentioned above, it's quite possible to push technology into the realm of magic, so what's the fundamental difference between them?  I have some strong ideas about this.  While the "magic grenades" analogy works for D&D magic, I really wish it didn't.  If magic and technology work in the same ways, then why bother calling them different things?  Why bother having both of them?  There needs to be some fundamental differences between the two.  What do I want to be different?
    Technology is impersonal - it's possible to accidentally shoot someone with a gun, it's impossible to accidentally cast a fireball.
    Technology is repetitive/ mass produced - there are a million swords, there is only one Excalibur.
    Technology is stable, reliable and repeatable - a hammer always acts like a hammer, a spell changes depending on the caster's identity and emotional state.
    Technology is governed by scarcity, magic is governed by cost.
    That last one deserves more explanation.  A gun shoots until you run out of bullets.  You cast fireballs as long as you're willing to pay the price.  This is the biggest thing I think is missing in RPG magic.  In the Vancian system magic is governed by scarcity, you have so many spell slots/ grenades that you can use.  But there is no cost.  You automatically gain those slots and they automatically replenish.  I don't like that model because I think all the best stories about magic focus on the cost of using magic.  Just think about Faust and the "selling your soul to the devil" theme.  If magic is emotion, then what price are you willing to pay for your emotions?  So magic needs to be governed by price, by cost.  There has to be a cost to gain it, and a cost to use it.  And you have to be able to do anything as long as you can pay the price.  I think that's the most critical thing to bake into the system.

    Here's the thing that really ties my brain in knots though: does everyone need magic?
    If magic is emotion made real, then doesn't that make non-magical classes or characters somehow lesser, or more restricted?  It is possible to say that all player characters/ classes use magic, the Earthdawn game does that just fine.  And you could say that the fighter-types just use a more limited or less-cost system of magic compared to full wizards/ casters.  And that would make sense, not everyone wants to sell their soul, maybe just lease it, with an option to buy :)  If magic comes with a price, then some might want to only pay for a sensible, small car and not a full-blown luxury yacht.  And since I'm defining my Humins to be innately magical (to justify the half-breeds) then saying they all use magic to a lesser or greater degree works.  And the other races may not have the same flexibility in using magic, but might still have innate magic, more like limited super-powers instead of the "can do anything I imagine" of a caster.

    Okay, I think that gives me a good foundation for thinking about magic.  Well, to start with.  So let me wrap this up and let those ideas percolate though my unconscious, and next week we'll take a look at the other side if the coin: what kinds of technology do I want in this world?  Until then!

Limiting Results To Represent Experience

    In most games a character's growing experience and skill are presented by an increasing modifier.  So in the 5e SRD I've been looking at there is the "proficiency bonus" that starts at +2 for a beginning level 1 character and goes to +6 for the supreme level 20 character.  In addition the 5e SRD, like many other games, adds a die roll to represent uncertainty and randomness to that modifier.  In this case it's the d20.  This is a pretty common system, though the size of the dice and modifiers varies.
    But I had a thought- what if instead of adding a modifier for experience/ skill we just changed the dice?
    The idea came from another thought.  I believe that one of the key differences between the amateur and the professional is reliability.  An amateur is unpredictable, they may perform wonderfully one day and terribly the next.  By contrast the master is consistent, they regularly perform at a high level.  They may have bad days, like anybody, but they will not swing as wildly as the beginner.  This can be represented easily in dice.  A single d20 is wild, it has the same odds (5%) of rolling a 1 as it does of rolling a 20.  Add in dice however, make it 2d10, and things change.  With 2d10 you lose the lowest result, the 1.  But at the new extremes, 2 and 20, you only have a 1% chance of rolling either.  But in the middle, at 11, you have a 5% chance of rolling that on a d20 but a 10% chance on 2d10.  This can be easily seen at the great website Anydice...

    So by changing from 1d20 to 2d10 for being "skilled" (let's call it) we've changed the odds quite a bit.  Our less skilled character has a 10% chance of rolling a 1 or 2, while the more skilled as a 1% chance of rolling a 2 and can't roll a 1.  So the more skilled has less critical failure than the less skilled.  That works.  On the opposite end, the less skilled has a 10% chance of rolling a 19 or 20, while the more skilled has a 3% chance - whoa, wait a minute, the more skilled has less opportunity for critical success?  That doesn't seem right.  Well, okay, but let's look at overall success.  The less skilled has a 50% chance of rolling an 11+, while the more skilled has a 55% chance.  So while they get fewer critical successes, they also get fewer critical failures and a slightly better overall chance of success.

    Those results are not terrible, but also not great, just changing the dice doesn't really give the kind of results I'd had in mind.  But then something else came to me: what if we changed the dice a lot?  Let's say we had 6 different skill levels: d20, d12+8, d10+10, d8+12, d6+14 and d4+16.  That's a lot, likely more than we'd want to use, but it gives us a good spread to choose from and just uses the typical RPG dice.  Let's compare these rolls to target numbers.  Let's see the odds of success for each against a DC: 10, 15 and 20...

d20:        55%  30%  5%
d12+8:    92%  50%  8%
d10+10:  100%  60%  10%
d8+12:   100%  75%  13%
d6+14:   100%  100%  17%
d4+16 :  100%  100%  25%

    There are a couple of things I like about this system, and a concern.  the biggest concern is working with only a few target numbers, like I did above.  I think for something like this I'd use more and closer target numbers like 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20.  Which would give:

d20:       45%  35%  25%  15%  5%
d12+8:  75%  58%  42%  25%  8%
d10+10:  90%  70%  50%  30%  10%
d8+12:  100%  88%  63%  38%  13%
d6+14:  100%  100%  83%  50%  17%
d4+16:  100%  100%  100%  75%  25%

    The extra granularity would help I believe.  I do like how higher levels of skill remove the possibility of lower results, in a way.  The idea that a master will never fumble or do something requiring a low roll has a good feeling of accomplishment, even though it eliminates some dramatic possibilities.
    Another thing that I think would be good about this system is modifiers.  Since the different dice create different possibilities I don't think you'd need many modifiers, and the ones you used would have a different effect.  With a +1 modifier the numbers would change like this (a partial table for brevity's sake):

unskilled- d20+1:  50%  40%  30%  20%  10%  (+5% to each)
medium skill- d10+11:  100%  80%  60%  40%  20%  (+10% to each)
high skill- d6+15:  100%  100%  100%  67%  33%  (+17% to each)

    So as you can see modifiers become more important at higher levels, which has the right feel to me.  I think the more skilled should have more draws, that every little thing should be more vital.  This also means that the +1 sword you got at first level (when you were unskilled) is literally 3 times more useful at 20th level, so again you can keep the modifiers down and make your equipment more valuable.  That will hopefully encourage players to hang on to their early items and grow with them instead of discarding them for some new shiny.

    I'm not sure if this is a worthwhile at all, but I think it has potential.

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 9 - Feats and Final Thoughts on Classes

    Since part 4 of this series started on classes and we're at part 9, I've been thinking about classes for a while now.  I want to wrap up this section and move on to other mechanics, even though I could write tons more picking apart all 20 levels of all 12 classes (that's 240+ abilities).  This post is going to hop-and-skip around a few different topics.


Ability Score Increases
    Every class gains an ability score boost every 4 levels.  This is weird to me.  The 3.5e SRD gave these on character levels, independent of class, so the shift is interesting - why did they change it?  I'm not sure.  It seems like it would punish multiclass characters, making a full level essentially worth nothing.  Which is point number two, even with the flat math of the game, this does not seem like it would feel very impressive to get as a level-up reward.  I don't agree with this one, this is something that logically should be in the background, not a specific character ability (the fact that every single class gets it exactly the same way and on the same schedule seems like it would suggest this is not really a class-based effect, just a part of growing older and wiser regardless of class).


Multiclassing and Leveling Up
    I am not a fan of counting XP, or gold either for that matter.  I think it adds a lot of book-keeping for little to no return.  What exactly is so dramatic about being 1 orc short of level 5?  What does the game gain from trying (and typically failing) to create an economy?  Along, in a way, with that I hate multiclassing in every class-based game I've ever read.  So, I'm not going to be taking a close look at how the 5e SRD handles either of these two topics because I already know I'm going to make something of my own (or steal from another game).  Again, this look is to help me prepare to create my own game, not because I want to pass the rules lawyer bar exam ;)


Static vs Dynamic Abilities
    This is something about how class abilities are created that eats at me.  Generally each class has one dynamic ability, a single ability that will gain extra options (not just extra power) as the class advances.  All the other class abilities are static, a single bonus to a single thing, which may "level up" by being a +2 bonus at the level one and a +3 bonus at level 3 and so on.  The thing is, static abilities are the least interesting.  They add one cool new thing, but often to only one circumstance, so while while getting a new ability feels good, how much you'll actually use it is another matter.  Second, increasing modifiers are evil, they lead to the dreaded numbers bloat.
    Dynamic abilities are the real magic, they let you do new and interesting stuff as you progress.  Having 3 ways to deal with a monster at level 1 and 50 ways to deal with a monster at level 20 feels like you've actually grown.  Because you have.  Increasing a modifier means you've progressed, being able to do something you couldn't, or having a new way to do something means you've grown.  But the game does not handle dynamic abilities very well.  In particular the fighter classes don't get any or very strong dynamic abilities.  Look at the Fighter's "Fighting Style" ability, which they can choose only once (in the straight class, not counting the archetype I'll go over later).  That's it.  Compare that to the Wizard's Spellcasting ability.  The classes with weak or no dynamic abilities need to be shored up.  But also, it feels kind of funny that at most every class only ever gets 1 dynamic ability.  Most of those are gained at 1st level, and the following 19 levels are just static abilities.  It seems to me that there should be 2 or 3 more dynamic abilities that are milestones of growth, adding a lot of options and more future options to the character as a sign of their growth through adversity.  I also think that higher-level monsters need more options and abilities than lower-level ones, so having more options as a character is necessary to find the more limited weaknesses of the monsters and/or resist the more frequent monster abilities.
     Along with this static vs dynamic thing is something that was huge in the 3.5e SRD, but deprecated in the 5e SRD, feats.
   
   
Feats
    If you ever played D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder then you have likely had many nightmares about feats; tracking the extremely complicated prerequisite chains and trying to pick out the handful for feats you got over your career from the hundreds to thousands (depending on how many books you bought) available.  Feats sucked.  There, I said it, they sucked.  They still suck big time in Pathfinder.  They suck because everybody and every book has to include two dozen new feats and there are no solid guidelines for what a feat is or how powerful it should be - so they vary hugely, wildly, and ridiculously in power.  I can easily think of several feats that should be abilities anybody could do, more that should be skill checks and several that are wickedly overpowered in the right combination (which I know from the players who've discovered those combinations).  They add way, way too much complexity and system knowledge and pre-planning to the game, which again gets worse with every new book.
    And I rant about another game to set up the fact that the designers of the 5e SRD knew all this about feats, so they totally changed the system.  In the 5e feats are optional, you can take a feat instead of an ability score increase if your GM is using this optional rule.  And as for power, the SRD has only one feat, again a sickening lack of guidance, and that feat is Grappling.  Grappling is arguably something that anybody should be able to do, though the feat does give you Advantage on it, so there's something.  The feat also lets you attempt to pin someone you have grappled, which again kind of seems like something anybody should be able to do.  I totally know how to grab you and wrap my arms around you to try and keep you from acting, I can see in my head how to do it - I'm sure you can too if you've ever been in a grade-school fight or watched an action movie.  I might not be any good at doing it, and I would get my backside kicked by a professional fighter, but it is an option.  This feat does not seem to add any really significant new options or dynamic abilities to the character.  So, sadly, the feat system in the SRD is useless.  No guidelines for what a feat should and should not do or how powerful they should be.  That's sad.  The total lack of feats and backgrounds makes me wish they had just left them out of the SRD altogether.  I think no system would be better than a system with bad or non-existent guidelines.
    I also started this feat discussion/rant with another game because I think a different game got feats right - and it's an OGL game too thank goodness.  In 13th Age you get a feat every level, and every class ability (even spells if I remember right) has 3-5 feat options - so you pick what ability you want to apply the feat to, and now that ability can do something new.  Perfect.  A nice dynamic expanding of your static abilities, and a system that helps make two identical classes grow in different directions.  I hate the 5e SRD's feats, but I will totally steal 13th Age's system.


Class Archetypes
    Speaking of static vs dynamic (which apparently this post turned into, huh) there are the class archetypes.  Every class has one of these, by some name.  It is the "Primal Path" for the Barbarian, the Cleric's "Domain" and the Warlock's "Patron".  At some intervals each archetype gives specific bonuses.  This makes two characters of the same class different, assuming they took different archetypes.  Each class gains/ chooses its archetype at a different point, either 1st, 2nd or 3rd level, and the archetype abilities are gained at different levels for each class.
    Like feats this is one of those systems that sounds good in practice, but can easily spiral out of control.  Again, each class has only 1 archetype listed, and no guidelines on what the power range should be.  Easy to make too many archetypes, to make them over- or under-powered, and you also need to balance archetypes against multiclassing, should an "arcane warrior" be a Fighter archetype, and Wizard archetype or a multiclass Fighter/Wizard?  That'll make your head hurt :)


    Class abilities are a complex subject.  I fully know that, and even trying to review and think about them is an invitation to insanity.  It would be great if there was some developer's guide somewhere that explained the thinking for each ability.  Why this one, at that power level for that class?  Those are thing that the designers had to think about when making the game - sadly I don't know of any game that had the designers' thoughts included with the rules.  And with something like an OGL game, that is an invitation for other people to design around, it would be priceless.  So I have a lot to think about when I go to make my own game off the SRD.  What abilities do I keep, which ones do I change, how do I balance the growth of the classes and the challenges they face.  And sadly there is little guidance from the developers so I'm going to have to answer a lot of questions on my own.  Can't say I'm looking forward to those hard decisions.

    And that's a wrap on classes.  Time to move on.  Since classes are one of the central parts of a character, let's move on to the central part of the game: the core mechanic of d20+stuff.  I see math in our future :)  Until next week!